by Jon Methven
“Hard?”
“Not hard.”
“More masculine, I mean.”
“I’m about to throw you out of this car,” he says, repositioning his large frame in the seat. “I wish he wasn’t so scared. Of every goddamned thing we encounter.”
“Scared,” I say. “Like the way he is with dogs.”
“Shit, I know you heard. Everyone heard.”
“Rumors, mostly.” I know the gossip. As we travel north on the interstate, just me and this giant man, the dog issue suddenly seems momentous to progress. “Go on, tell it.”
Jackson sighs, shrugs. “School event two years ago. He was chaperoning a field trip to the Met and a dog came out of nowhere. Barking, yapping, something wrong with it maybe. The owner wasn’t around. Scaring the kids.”
I put the car in cruise control and lean back to enjoy the sound of my neighbor’s marital hardships.
“Kids screaming, crying, running away, which upsets the dog more. As the chaperone, Jason instinctively gets between them, trying to scare it off.”
“I didn’t know about this.”
He watches the side of my head as I drive. “Something you should know about him, Pisser. Don’t ever fuck with Jason. I know he comes off a bit soft. But if you’re ever in a confrontation, give up early. Just put up your hands and concede. He’s a slapper, a scratcher, a gouger, dirty little motherfucker.”
A bus veers into my line and I react, repositioning the car. “So what happened?”
He exhales deeply. “Dog jumps on top of him and Jason hollers for the kids to run. It’s biting him and he knows he’s in trouble, so he rolls over to cover his head. That’s when it happened.”
“What happened?”
“Dog started humping him.”
The stress of the morning, along with the bus in my blind spot, has thrown my concentration. I misunderstand the story. “Jason was raped by a dog?”
“No, damn it, Pisser.” He sighs out the window and continues. “It just looked like it. And you think all those kids he put his life on the line to save ran for safety? Nah, they didn’t. They took out their phones to record it.”
“Fucking cameras everywhere.”
“Most of the videos were deleted, but one or two still exist. Jason talks about it all the time. He wakes up in the night reliving it, but mostly he knows—one of those little fuckers has video. Really shook him up, as you can imagine.”
“No wonder he hates dogs,” I say.
Something strange has occurred since we began our therapy chat. The bus that nearly ran us off the road several miles earlier is now in front of us, a rented motor coach with Gopa Worthy insignia in several windows. The bus is carrying the lacrosse equipment which usually follows the team bus. There is no sign of the team, which would have arrived in Darien an hour ago for preparation. This bus is lost or had a flat or possibly a mechanical failure. Certainly something is wrong as I inch closer.
“What are you doing?” Jackson asks.
“Nothing,” I say, offended. “What do you mean?”
We follow for several miles at the slower pace, my Subaru Forester close to the tailgate to see inside. The bus driver puts on the turn signal. I put on my turn signal.
“Pisser.”
The bus pulls toward the shoulder, a rest stop ahead. I follow, slowing down to give some separation.
“Tom?”
“Maybe there’s something wrong. We should check it out.”
“What are you up to?”
“What am I up to?” I repeat, shouting, but genuinely interested in the answer. Jackson sighs, shakes his big head. “We are Gopa parents. We have a responsibility to the team to make sure this bus reaches its destination.”
At the fork where the cars separate from the trucks, the bus veers right. We go left and park in the center of the lot. The bus lurches to a stop and the driver bolts out the door, a stream of vomit onto the pavement as he heaves loudly.
“The flu,” Jackson says. “Everyone has it.”
I check the time and then the parking lot. “He’s running late. He’s separated from the lead bus.” The flu has been going around Gopa, and in a brief session of clarity, I see beauty in the transfer of the ailment. I had it the morning I strangled Toby, passed it around to several of the gaping parents in the restroom, to Jackson’s brood and Josey, and eventually to this bus driver, the interconnectedness of the universe that Gus mentioned earlier. I get out and check the parking lot again to see if I recognize any parents. No Gopa bumper stickers. “He’s all by himself.”
Jackson watches me. “What are we doing, Tom?”
“I don’t know.” Back inside, I close the door and take a moment to consider, Jackson considering me from the passenger seat. “What are we doing, Jackson?”
The bus driver removes a handkerchief and rubs his mouth. Hispanic, in his sixties, I do not recognize him. The Gopa administration loves to keep a balance of minorities on the payroll, which implies investment in the community, goodness, worthy labor practice. He will not lose his job, which somehow matters as I calculate the odds. He begins walking into the rest stop to finish what he’s started on the pavement, and I climb out of the car again.
We do not discuss it, but I find myself wishing we would, just so I can plead my case that none of what is about to transpire is premeditated. People do the wrong thing all the time. Hell, myself and Jackson and our neighbors have managed to do the wrong thing regarding Moveable Museums, an ethical bending into which we negotiated our consciences. How can this be categorized differently? The stress of Gopa, of being outsiders, of our children suffering inequities at the hands of the lacrosse machine simply because they do not belong. They tease Damian for teaching them basic mathematics skills. They have implicated my daughter in a way I cannot quite place, though I know it exists. They have used the Gopa website to highlight our flaws. Indirectly, they have caused Jason to step between their brood and a deranged animal, which has infected Jackson’s marriage and our level of worthiness on this Saturday. Better that we say nothing. Better that we not talk each other out of it. Besides that, I am not running my machine anymore. To look into my eyes is to see Tom Pistilini, Channel Fourteen meteorologist and father of two, but the savages have taken the reins and are slapping forth my Clydesdales.
“You drive the Subaru,” I say.
“This is a bad idea, Pisser.”
“So is the prospect of watching those assholes hoist a championship trophy.”
“If the keys are gone you get your ass back here.” Jackson climbs out of the passenger side and tugs up his pants. I open the backend and grab a putter, our minds in sync. “Watch out for cameras,” he says.
“Ten minutes before he figures it out.”
“No more than two exits. Find a public place. Another high school, other games, other buses.”
“Just don’t lose me,” I say. For good measure, “Jackson, drive safe. You hit a bump and you’ll knock over a bunch of the pancake people.”
I dash across the parking lot, an anonymous place where everyone hurries and no one pays attention to hijackings. The bus door is slightly ajar, a camera mounted over the door that points down at the driver’s seat. It takes me four whacks to land the winning smash and I climb in to find the bus empty, equipment stacked neatly in rows, medical kits, coolers, duffel bags, cleats, lacrosse sticks. The keys are in the ignition.
I have never driven a bus, although I have ridden one each morning for years, having watched the driver’s mechanics, the motion of his shoulders. I am relieved to discover it has automatic transmission. It takes a moment to get the feel of the thing, and while I cannot see anything below me, I manage to pull out of the rest stop without clipping any vehicles. Pedestrians see the giant machine hover toward them and step out of the way, and Jackson navigates the parking lot until he is below me as I pass.
I offer a wave. He does not wave back.
On the interstate it hits me in waves, soft flashes across my skin, that I have just stolen a bus. Tom Pistilini is petrified, the creatures undeterred by this world, and we battle over the terrain. I keep the bus at a smooth sixty miles per hour, the Subaru back a quarter mile. I click on the radio to take my mind off the dry mouth, the sweats, the unseemly erection, searching for any station playing Jason Isbell. I cannot concentrate on the road and the radio, and I stop with the buttons once I find a song I recognize. Bob Dylan’s kid, the name escapes me, though I enjoyed his music the one time I heard it, his band the expensive entertainment at a Gopa Christmas party. The lyrics are encouraging—got a good woman by my side, I ain’t got much on my mind—and I roll down the window and blare the music. Here come the Worthy’s things. Here come the Worthy’s tape and water coolers and destruction. Here come the Worthy’s pancakes. A beautiful spring day and two dozen warriors awaiting their armory that will never arrive, the parents nibbling hors d’oeuvres and talking strategy as I shout the only lyrics I recognize at the shuttered streaks of passing cars. Something good this way comes.
A Little Rain Must Fall
The cell phone towers disguised as juniper trees do not burn like normal wood. They contain timber somewhere in the complicated core, a series of polyester and carbonite fixtures that refuse to perish obediently in my pit. They are a nice addition for their aesthetic value. They look like the Yule Logs that burn on television during Christmas, a roaring convulsion to the flames, allowing the regular wood to burn hotter and brighter, a slight blue orneriness to the embers as they tuck peacefully into the beyond. Every so often the cell phone wood gives off the most delightful hisses and twangs, the fiber optics succumbing to the heat, the silica and crystalline sapphires genuflecting to the forces of combustion. There are chemical vapors I cannot see, the collected whispers of my tribe, the calls and texts and emails and photos and shared intensity of our conniptions, and these broken towers continue to transmit even as I heave them on my pyre. My pocket buzzes with Tug’s correspondence, the anonymous numbers of people who do not believe the rumors. Tug is gone. Tug is no longer part of the supply chain. I pop one of my final Luderica.
The savages embarked on a reconnaissance mission to find more cell phone trees, swatting down eleven cameras in the process. One cannot just swat at the technology. One must be careful not to enter its vision, the savages creeping on the recorders stealthily and disconnecting the wires, then destroying them with a handheld four-pound sledgehammer that retails for forty-seven dollars. I also ordered some additional razor edged chains from VillageShop, which got the job done, sawing up three cell phone trees the savages have stacked beneath and around the fire pit. It gives the backyard a gorgeous tincture, everyone says so, even my kids who commented on them this afternoon. And the nice thing is that I only have to burn two or three chunks each season, the rest able to stay out all year since the components are immune to the conditions, unlike my real wood that has to be covered with a tarp every winter.
Sunday in April, a day after the latest humiliation in what has been a disappointing campaign for the Gopa Worthy lacrosse team. Their equipment bus lost or stolen, no one clear what happened, assistant coach Hunter Herman begged the Darien side to reschedule. There has been bad blood between the two sides since Gopa stole Russ Haverly from Darien, and the new coach refused. Hunter Herman does not have the clout or blackmail skills of his mentor, and the Worthy were forced to forfeit what would have been a prosperous victory and decent bump up the state rankings. I am told that Doug Whorley and Rhen Sedlock got into a fistfight with Darien supporters as they made their way to the remaining team bus, sore losers, the ride home a series of disgusted accusations about how a bus goes missing. Todd McClutchen was said to be in tears, his father consoling him in the parking lot with packaged wisdom.
The story is all over the news: Channel Fourteen, Lustfizzle, even ESPN did a sardonic clip on what to do when you lose your equipment bus. It was found twelve miles from Darien blending in with other buses near the Shipman Academy, a team Gopa beat by twenty goals earlier this season. Police are calling it a likely prank by private school students, which is the rumor being spread by the nannies. Parents discuss it on the Gopa website, everyone with a theory, even Gus coming out of his nanny swaddle to enjoy the hijinks. We are all in a strange state of schadenfreude and sympathy, even Sharon Li I imagine, apathetically pulling for our Gopa boys with the understanding that they, both parents and athletes, turn into God’s little shits every spring when things go well. Humble pie, in the proper serving, does wonders for humanity.
A small band gathers around my cell tower fire sipping a red that Jackson brought, which everyone says is delicious though I cannot taste anything. The lagoon percolates softly, the blue lights offering a seductive glow though none of us are dressed for a dip. Rain clouds pass through, occasionally drizzling us with a precocious mist. Jason Isbell is overhead singing about old lovers and cold nights. The Cooperative Marriage meeting has commenced, my second no-show, though I appreciate the nearness of my wife and potential lover and his wife and their therapist enjoying one another inside our home, not talking about the same topic we do not discuss at the fire pit.
Josey Mateo is quiet, waiting for the others to leave, her skin deranged with fresh markings: a herd of stick mongrels migrating down her neck and arms toward her small breasts. She told me in private she is proud of me even though she would have assisted in planning the thievery more efficiently, had I inquired. She combs out thistles from Clint Eastwood’s coat and rubs the heaving belly. Jackson usually hugs me when he arrives, though he neglected to this evening. He is tense, nervous, reminding me to keep my mouth shut. While I might earn a slap on the wrist with the proper legal representation, as a black man the road to purity will be strewn with hardship, not to mention what the Gopa parents will say. He has seen Josey at my fire pit before. Knowing about Ray and Laura, he keeps his opinions to himself. Bill Chuck, Slancy’s security chief, stopped by to lodge a feline complaint and accepted a glass of wine. We all thought Bill had come about the bus.
“Took a good chunk out of a golfer’s leg today,” Bill says.
“What did he do to the cat?” Josey asks.
“She, Miss. And nothing. The cat was sitting on the fourth tee and would not move,” Bill says. “Missus Naylor was preparing to tee off and shooed him away.”
“Shooed it how? Waving a golf club or hissing or what manner?”
“I imagine that’s about right.”
“No wonder the cat attacked. Thought it was in danger.” Josey sips, rubs, and straightens her glasses. “Golf course. Waste of land.”
“I’d agree with that assessment, Miss.” Bill points at her lap. “Don’t let it wander out of your sight. Feral cats are territorial. It’ll attack your cat for sure.”
Bill thinks we are talking about a feral animal that is stray and fierce and male, not the oversized kitten, fluffy and pregnant, resting in Josey’s lap. He also has not inquired into her identity, a T-shirt on a crisp night, the pen drawings running up and down her chestnut skin so that she appears like every junky Bill had to cuff during his career.
I daydream of sad lacrosse players, their pillows wet from tears, of ruined celebration parties, of athletic scholarships evaporating. Of mothers consoling babies, of fathers consoling each other as they recheck the schedule, wondering where they could squeeze in a rematch with Darien, of angry fingers on dainty keyboards typing their grievances onto the Gopa website. The savages typed an earlier ballad of “lost ships that head to black waters for war and wayfare and never reach their destined coasts and never return to their origins rather drift and bob and soak in haughty seas until they perish in the tide and though a sad day has befallen our lacrosse oarsman do not equate it to the vast tragedies that have ripped heart and hope from our kind through the annals for ours is a gentle ending a peaceful culmin
ation as all the sticks and helmets and pads and coolers returned safely to our shore curbside out front of Gopa.” Most parents do not know what to make of it. Several moms flag it as hate speech. The comments are delightful.
“Understand it isn’t personal,” Bill says.
“It’s okay, Bill. I’ll see what I can do.”
His glass empty, he recognizes it is time to depart. I stand to shake his hand. Jackson left without a goodbye, perhaps assuming I am pursuing sexual relations with the Gopa secretary, exploring her frail and unassuming body in a tent in my backyard. I have never thought of sex with Josey, other than a desire to see if the pen etchings extend over her breasts and flat stomach, down to her pubic bone and inner thighs. The only woman I desire is Laura. I believe Josey continues to return to my backyard because she needs something from me, but it is not sexual in nature.
There is an element between us, an undefined barter that has drifted into the territory of coalition. I have broken my confidentiality agreement and told her about Moveable Museums, the new investment, the school shootings, the money I am due to earn. She was kind enough to not pass judgment, though she disappeared for a week, arriving at my hearth with news of the bus nabbing. She has confided in me as well. The pen drawings help relieve anxiety, a trick taught to her by an ex-boyfriend, Phil. Phil also instructed her in the arts of programming subculture, otherwise known as computer hacking. She and a crew of miscreants refer to themselves as ethical hackers, of which I prod her for detail that she is reluctant to offer.
“We’re good enough to hack into Gopa’s website, as well as VillageShop, to clean up your mess.”
I’m thankful but dubious. “Why would you do that for me?”
“Because you’re a good man, Tom. We help good people.”
She has secrets, which I admire, and a juiced out laptop on which she can access all the Gopa parents. In addition to deleting the Hendersons’ delivery address of orders I placed from Tug’s cell phone, she knows all my purchases from VillageShop, both this month and five years ago, how much we spend on tuition, which after-school activities we pushed on the kids, an archive of success and failure. She has passage to the same information for the Sedlocks and McClutchens and Millers and Lis and Tarentellis and Winstons, an encyclopedia of our neuroses and passions.